Nearly five years after they last took the stage in Music City, the members of Nashville rock group Kings of Leon were happy to see a hometown crowd at Bridgestone Arena on Friday night.

"It's been too long," frontman Caleb Followill told the packed house early in the evening, later adding, "It's good to be home."

Nashville was just the second stop on the band's two-month arena tour in support of their sixth album, "Mechanical Bull." After testing the waters in Atlanta on Wednesday, the band seemed right up to speed, plowing through dozens of songs from all points in their catalog, from 2003's "Molly's Chambers" to last year's "Supersoaker."

CLICK THE PHOTO ABOVE for a gallery of Nashville-connected artists who performed in the 55th Grammy Awards in 2013. Here, Taylor Swift performs on stage during the show in Los Angeles. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

Which means the city’s musicians have only three slots in the four all-genre categories: Taylor Swift for best album, and Kacey Musgraves and new resident Ed Sheeran for top new artist. And some of Music City’s commercial blockbusters (Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line) and critically hailed works (such as Jason Isbell’s “Southeastern” album in Americana and Caitlyn Rose’s “The Stand-In” in country and pop) received no nominations, just like our symphony and our other classical and jazz artists.

But if this is a down year, then things are looking up.

Tonight’s 56th annual Grammy Awards will offer plenty of showcases for Music City performers both contemporary and vintage. Swift will play a prominent role, performing onstage at Staples Center and competing in the races for best album, best country album, country song and country duo or group performance (with “Highway Don’t Care” conspirators Tim McGraw and Keith Urban). Her fellow country crossover superstar Urban will perform with guitarist Gary Clark Jr., and young guitar-slinger Hunter Hayes will perform his new, emotion-drenched single, “Invisible,” during the show.

For better or worse, when it comes to music, 2013 may be remembered as the Year of Miley. Month after month, Nashville native Miley Cyrus tongue-wagged her way into the headlines, and was just revealed to be the most-Googled person of the year.

But, we’ll remember that tons of other talented Nashvillians made waves this year — with tunes instead of twerks. Here are 13 of the hitmakers, pairings, mainstays and undersung favorites that made 2013 yet another banner year for Music City.

She came to Middle Tennessee from Pennsylvania at 14, and in the ensuing near-decade she has become an international superstar, and a wealthy young woman. Those are rare and laudable things, but they’ve been done before.

Swift, though, is unprecedented. She came to popular attention with Top 10 country hit “Tim McGraw” when she was 16, becoming the first mid-teenage singer-songwriter to do so since Janis Ian hit the Top 20 with “Society’s Child” in 1967. And Swift has made the most graceful transition from teen stardom to adult music career since Brenda Lee, who recorded signature hit “I’m Sorry” at age 15 and maintained an impeccable image on her way to the country music and rock and roll halls of fame.

Yet these are not the reasons that The Tennessean recognizes Swift as the 2013 Tennessean of the Year.

Swift has become a worldwide ambassador for Tennessee’s capital city, an example to millions of young (and not-so-young) people of how to turn damaged feelings into healing creativity, and a financial booster to some of the city’s most important institutions. In October, the Taylor Swift Education Center opened at the greatly expanded Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, courtesy of Swift’s $4 million gift, the largest individual artist gift in the museum’s history.

The center, which opened ahead of schedule in October, spans two floors and includes three classrooms, a learning lab and, coming in 2014, an interactive exhibit gallery. It gives the museum seven times more space for education.

And this month, on her birthday, Swift offered up $100,000 to the Nashville Symphony, an organization that endured severe financial uncertainty in 2013. For the second consecutive year, Swift topped DoSomething.org’s list of the top 20 charitable celebrities, and much of her generosity is intended for the betterment of Nashville.

“For her to believe in us, the hometown institutions, and to be focused on Nashville speaks volumes,” says Kyle Young, the director and chief executive officer of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. “How often do you think she’s approached to do things, all over the world? So it means so much for her to believe in us and think that investments here would help the city she clearly cares so much about.”

The ambassador

In many ways, Swift carries Nashville and its music all over the world.

Country newcomer Kacey Musgraves and multiplatinum-selling country crossover Taylor Swift emerged as the top Nashville nominees when the Recording Academy announced nominations for its 56th annual Grammy Awards on Friday night, many of which were revealed during a live television concert on CBS. Jay Z tops overall nominations with nine.

Nashville’s Musgraves and Swift each had four nominations. They also tied for the top nominee for November’s CMA Awards.

LL Cool J hosted the show, which took place in Nashville in 2012 but this year returned to Los Angeles. Friday night’s show featured Swift and fellow Nashvillians Keith Urban and Ed Sheeran.

Click the photo above for a photo gallery from the making of the 'CMT Crossroads.' Here, Patrick Stump of the Fall Out Boy and Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry talk over their parts as they rehearse a song on Oct. 1, 2013, in Nashville. (Photo: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean)

Stump, lead singer for rock group Fall Out Boy, was baffled — even with the help of a teleprompter — the first time his group and Perry’s sibling trio attempted the soaring ballad in rehearsal. While Kimberly Perry nailed the lyrics to her trio’s song, Stump didn’t even attempt the lines assigned to him and asked to go through the song with just Kimberly Perry and a guitar.

“There were a lot of rhythms that just came in sideways in my head,” Stump said of “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely.” “By the end of it, that will probably end up being my favorite song because that was the one we spent the most time on.”

The unexpected collaboration between The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy and the initial confoundedness with “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely” is par for the course for CMT’s long-running cross-genre duet series, “Crossroads.”

While members of both bands struggled at times during rehearsals, they managed to learn each other’s songs enough to confidently perform them together during the next day’s live taping of “Crossroads.”

“It’s interesting because there’s all this angst going (into the taping) about who is going to do what,” said John Hamlin, executive producer on “Crossroads” and senior vice president of music events and talent at CMT. “When ultimately the musicians step onto the stage for the first rehearsal, they instantly speak a language that the rest of us don’t speak and they work it out between themselves. They are always very gracious and very generous and very inclusive.”

Kings of Leon pose by their star on the Music City Walk of Fame in Nashville, Tenn. on September 21, 2012. (photo: Samuel M. Simpkins/The Tennessean)

Live from New York, it's Kings of Leon. The Nashville rock group will return to "Saturday Night Live" on Dec. 14 as the show's musical guests with host John Goodman. It's the third "SNL" appearance for the band, following visits in 2008 and 2010.

In September, Kings of Leon released their sixth studio album, "Mechanical Bull." They'll headline Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on February 7.

As Caleb Followill stepped up to the microphone at War Memorial Auditorium Saturday night, he asked a room filled with revelers to help sing along on the next number.

"It's been a long day," he explained.

Followill certainly had a full plate this weekend. The frontman for Nashville rock group Kings of Leon was in the thick of Music City Eats, a three-day food and music festival he'd dreamt up with brother and bandmate Nathan Followill.

Saturday night was where the music came in: for "Petty Fest Nashville," a salute to the songs of Tom Petty - and a genre-blending jam session that showed off the modern, multifaceted Music City.

Nashville may seem to host a new all-star concert every week, but in some ways, "Petty Fest" felt like a first, showing off a newly minted "It City" where several breeds of musicians - from arena rockers to country stars, award-winning songsmiths and club veterans - could team up on one stage for a night of fast-and-loose covers.